Mechanus
The Clockwork Stairway, the Geared Society, and the Birthplace of the Ancients. It is a plane of simple formulas, intricate designs, and dutiful guardians; where the God of Law, Wol, makes home with his Inevitable court. =Ecology= Mortals who favor the law above all else end up here after death, serving Wol as judges, accountants, and interplanar watchmen. Inevitables Clockwork humanoids, each type of inevitable is designed to find and punish a particular kind of transgression, hunting down a person or group that has violated a fundamental principle. When an inevitable is created, it receives its first mission, then finds the transgressors and metes out appropriate punishment. The sentence is usually death, although some inevitables insist on compensation to the wronged party instead. Some seek to balance good and evil, while others deal with policy breakers such as time-travelers or sentient undead. They range from being symmetrical and polygonal in shape to resembling normal humans with obvious robotic workings. They are forged in giant molds that float about Mechanus, powered by unknown forces. Kolyaruts Kolyaruts mete out punishment to those who break bargains and oaths. Before beginning a mission against a deal-breaker, a kolyarut learns as much about the contract or oath as possible. It’s not interested in those who break deals accidentally or against their will— only those who willingly break contracts violate the principle that kolyaruts are created to uphold. If a written contract was broken, the kolyarut typically carries a copy of the contract with it. Kolyaruts are the most talkative of the inevitables, making credible attempts at social niceties such as proper greetings before getting down to the matter at hand. They can use disguise self to appear as almost any kind of humanoid—useful if they need to go undercover to catch their quarry. Marut Maruts confront those who would try to deny the grave itself. Any who use unnatural means to extend their life span could be targeted by a marut. Those who take extraordinary measures to cheat death in some other way might be labeled transgressors as well. Those who use magic to reverse death aren’t worthy of a marut’s attention unless they do so repeatedly or on a massive scale. When a marut has identified its target, it walks surely and implacably toward the foe, never resting. Zelekhut Zelekhuts are charged with hunting down those who would deny justice—especially those who flee to escape punishment. Expert trackers, they use a combination of natural skill and magic to find fugitives wherever they may hide. A zelekhut may initially appear rather non-threatening—but when it is about to enter combat, it can cause two spiked chains to spring forth from its forearms. In similar fashion, it can cause a pair of golden metallic wings to emerge from its back. Quarut Quaruts are among the most powerful of inevitables in existence. They protect two of the most precious and tenuou things of all time: time and space. They use their uncanny sense of both temporal and spatial awareness to know when transgressions that disrupt the time-space continuum are taking place, and then they hunt down the perpetrators. A quarut appears humanoid in form, though that is where the resemblance ends. Typical of most inevitables, a quarut has a clockwork body, complete with gears and pistons. Numerous small timepieces and hourglasses function within its body. In place of a head, it has a continually flowing hourglass; sometimes the sand inside the hourglass seems to be flowing up, and no quarut has ever explained why this is so. Varakhut Varakhuts are defenders of the gods. While inevitables themselves do not worship any entity, they understand the necessity of these beings and know that their demise would bring nothing but chaos to the universe. They hunt down those that attempt to usurp the power of the gods for themselves. Varakhuts are abstract-looking beings roughly humanoid in form. Their bodies are blocky and made up of intricate clockwork. Small spheres resembling planets and galaxies can sometimes be glimpsed inside their metal framework. Varakhuts do not act on behalf of any particular deity and have defended the entire spectrum of the pantheon, moralities, and ethical outlooks. =Regions of Mechanus= Consisting of a wide landscape made entirely out of clockwork gears, Mechanus is the former home of the Ancients and the current home of Wol. Each gear turns with one another in a grand design, and settlements ranging from small towns to metropolises are built upon them, but the center most area houses the Infinite Clock, surrounded by the stone tablets containing the Universal Laws. Inventions In the beginning, the Ancients strove to solidify themselves and the ideals of Law. They did this by making small inventions; two bars of metal combining with two more to make four totalm for example, or other basic ideals such as a light ascending and descending a flight of stairs. These random creations still exist on Mechanus, floating about the realm-space or suspended in the air for visitors to view. They blanket the plane much in the same way stars blanket the sky of Kharlia at night. Infinite Clock Near the end of the rule of the Ancients, the ideal of Time was discovered and subsequently led to the downfall of their society. This immense occasion, and scientific discovery, sparked the beginning of the Infinite Clock, an immense sand timer which assumedly controls the speed and direction of the gears throughout the plane. It is rumored that the body left behind by the former God of Time and current God of Death, Virvius, makes up the sand within the Infinite Clock. Situated on all sides of the clock are four, equally large tablets where upon the Universal Laws are kept. =A Day in the Life= Days are subjective in Mechanus, as time flows "purely" here moreso than any other plane. Mechanical beings known as Inevitables police the plane, waiting for orders or watching silently for infractions upon their laws. Some rule over the various settlements in Mechanus, often having bizarre rules that travelers and natives alike must adhere to, and inter-planar commerce is popular as Mechanus is often a springboard into other planes via the Astral realm. A quiet calm often overcomes the plane before any great war or crisis, and it is to many a large think-tank for planning the workings of the multiverse. =History of Mechanus= Somewhere in Mechanus lies the very spot that the first logical, rational thought came into existence in the Multiverse. As the chaos surrounded this lone sentience, it begat others like it by coming up with the basics tenets of logical calculations. Eventually, this ideal became palpable and the beings known as the Ancients created their first plane. Mechanus, as it would later come to be known, was nothing more than a few miles of shapes, colors, and song. Anything that could be considered symmetrical evolved from here, though whether they were truly first discovered here or they had always existed and simply first showed up here is unknown. The Ancients soon discovered architecture and, slowly, the plane grew into one large, meaningful design. This force of Law was enough to shunt the forces of Chaos far away into the ends of the multiverse and barriers formed between those early planes. After the Ancients fled, Wol took up the mantle of watching over the plane and kept his gift of planar creation hidden, for he had little use for it.